West Haven mayor under fire about WHHS Building Committee

Published 8:19 pm, Tuesday, February 11, 2014

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(Melanie Stengel — New Haven Register) Newly inaugurated West Haven Mayor, Edward O'Brien, tells the crowd assembled at City Hall "At the holiday season we count our blessings. In West Haven we recount them". O'Brien was alluding to the recount of election votes for himself and former mayor, John Picard 12/1. less

(Melanie Stengel — New Haven Register) Newly inaugurated West Haven Mayor, Edward O'Brien, tells the crowd assembled at City Hall "At the holiday season we count our blessings. In West Haven we ... more

The council spent more than an hour debating the issue, including the disputed question of who has the power to appoint and remove committee members, at a meeting Monday night that lasted nearly to midnight.

“Going on opinions and past practices, it’s the opinon that the mayor has the power to appoint people to the committee,” Deputy Corporation Counsel Jerome Lacobelle Jr. told the council.

“Has anyone done anything wrong? I mean, were they caught with their hands in the till?” asked Rossi.

“...We really need clarification on this,” she said.

O’Brien said that he was simply trying to put some of his own people on the committee, which was formed to oversee construction on what now is estimated to be a $130 million project, of which the city will pay about $40 million after 75 percent state reimbursement.

He also pointed out that several committee members don’t currently live in West Haven.

The committee “is two-thirds the same” as before “and of the five remaining, three of them aren’t eligible to be on” because they don’t live in West Haven, he told the council.

Carney — whom O’Brien initially sought to remove but whom he has since reappointed after Carney’s lawyer sent the city a letter — is one of them.

He lives in Orange.

But Carney appears to be protected because he was one of seven members of the city Building Oversight Committee appointed by the council resolution establishing the School Building Committee, O’Brien said after the meeting.

The committee was created by a City Council resolution on June 22, 2009, with seven members who were members of the city’s Building Oversight Committee automatically placed and seven left to be appointed. The resolution never said who would appoint them, however, and it wasn’t until this past November that former Mayor John Picard appointed several additional members.

“If Mayor Picard appointed people to that committee, then they weren’t legal members,” said Councilman Mike Last, D-9, one of the council members who believe the council is the one with the appointing power.

“This has been happening all along,” said O’Brien, who told the council he believed the practice of mayor’s appointing members was only being questions now “because I’m mayor.”

But Chairman Nick Pascale, D-1, said that the questions arose “because someone was removed,” which has not happened before.

“If we have to go and get outside counsel, that’s something I’m prepared to do,” he said.

School Building Committee member Don Siclari now lives in Florida, at least one other member lives in Orange and member Cliff Blackwood has been spending an extended amount of time in the Phillipines, although O’Brien was not yet sure he actually lives there, the mayor said.

Carney said Blackwood does business in the Phillipines and is currently there on business.

“When I was removed, I went out and hired counsel,” said Carney, chairman of the Building Oversight Committee as well as the WHHS School Building Committee and owner of Baybrook Remodeling.

“The (City) Charter says that when you remove someone from a committee, you can only remove them for cause” unless there are limits specifying when the terms end, he said, “and there has to be due process.”

Carney said the position of his lawyer, Jeffrey Donofrio, “was that I was appointed by the council and that I was appointed for the duration of the project. So they put me back on.”

But Lacobelle said that’s not the case.

With regard to the Building Oversight Committee and its term, “We believe it was the term of the mayor, so that when the mayor’s term ended, the committee ended,” Lacobelle said.

But Councilman Stephen DeCrescenzo, D-at-large, said that “as far as term limit goes” on the School Building Committee, I would think it would be the completion of the project.”

Several City Council members, including Pascale, suggested that O’Brien’s actions might adversely impact state funding for the $130 million project.

But Jeff Beckham, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said Tuesday that the state’s reimbursement process requires only “that there be a duly-authorized school building committee” and doesn’t get into how it’s chosen or how members are replaced.

According to Carney, they city has drawn down about $2 million of state funding and spent about $1.7 million, including $220,000 for removal of asbestos in the basement of a part of the existing high school building that will be part of the new building.

The design calls for 205,000-square-feet of new school and 75,000-square-feet that will be completely renovated sections of the old school. The portions being used will be gut rehabs except for the newer administrative wing, which was built in 2000, Carney said.